Owners of attractive plates and dishes, whether the plates are fine china, antiques, or more common items, often desire to display their possessions. To this end, numerous plate holders and the like have been developed and patented. Additionally, racks have been developed to hold or display cooking lids for everyday kitchen use.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 674,868 to Lane teaches a rack for holding a plurality of lids of varying sizes in two vertically spaced apart rows. The lids are held in the rack by front and rear engagement of the lids with various portions of the rack.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,266,245 to Fuhrmann teaches a rack for supporting lids wherein the lids are individually supported in a single vertically oriented column. The rack comprises a pair of converging, upwardly extending legs from which a plurality of fingers project to provide a support for the lids. The lids are supported by the rack at approximately a forty-five degree angle.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,454,516 to Laureyns, U.S. Pat. No. 2,620,928 to Brooks and U.S. Pat. No. 2,939,586 to Dumains teach plate holders for supporting a plurality of plates in a single horizontal row in a generally upright fashion.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,835,394 to Seymour teaches a display rack having a base plate and rear support portions for supporting a plurality of plates in a somewhat circular orientation. The plate edges are received by slots disposed in the base plate.
Additionally, it has been known in the past to use a plate rack which mounts one or more plates in a one layer row along a wood frame with all the plates at substantially the same distance from the front face of the wood frame. Commonly the plates would be supported on the rack by means of forwardly extending spaced apart pegs which support the lower portion of each plate at two locations about the periphery of the round plate. The upper part of the plate is inclined rearwardly against the face or rack and, if desired, may be removably affixed to the rack by means of a Velcro.RTM. type of fastener.
While each of the above prior art racks has some advantages for displaying plates, each also suffers from certain disadvantages. For example, with the exception of the Seymour device, any plate displayed on the patented holders would result in an obscuring of the decorative and aesthetically pleasing features of the plates either by components of the rack or by the other plates. While not simply blocking the features of the plate, the Seymour rack is configured such that optimal viewing can take place only from directly in front of the rack. Movement from one side to the other of the optimal point may result in an obscuring of one plate by the other. Finally, the recited prior art apparatus comprising the wooden rear support member and the bottom supporting peg members is designed primarily to accommodate a single plate size and not a plurality of plate sizes such as are commonly found in a dishware set.
It would be desirable therefore to have a plate rack capable of displaying in an aesthetically pleasing manner different sizes of plates as are commonly found in a typical dinnerware setting.